Picked up a few old machines today running windows 95 and 98. Functional. Seem to sell for $100+ each on eBay plus shipping. Worth it? (Worried about shipping damage, customer complaints etc). Would hate to just scrap them. Tips and feedback appreciated.

It depends on what you paid, honestly. Shipping is going to run $30-$50 per unit on average.

The single point of contention, for me, in refurbishment, is the volume of DOA hard drive complaints I get. Given that a knowledgeable tech can usually “park” a read head before shut down and shipping, I know my reported rate is inflated over actual death rates. These days I do all the work and then sell refurb/used computers WITHOUT the drive. I get half to two thirds the complete rate but cut out 100% of doa complaints. The alternative is shipping insured for the value of the system, usually a bit more money: which I do for people who specifically ask for and pay for the addition of a hard drive above and beyond the auction.

As scrap; Depending on the processor they run well under $10 to near $30+ currently depending on the processor and number, type of expansion cards.

_________________-- my grades are my own and do not represent an offer from boardsort, nor are they guaranteed. Please keep that in mind.

If boot to password is a boot up password, before the operating system loaded:Try admin, Admin, password, Password, and PassWord.

Next step of your not afraid of getting inside it:If none of that works next step is to pop it open and remove the button battery. With the machine unplugged, laptop battery removed. Unscrew the screws under the base. MOST IBM laptops will have the keyboard lift up and out when all screws are removed. Look for the little button cell or long fat cell that looks like a AA battery on steroids. And remove it for a few minutes and then put it all back together.

Next of if you skipped the previous step. Still have a password? Try this page (and for this case ignore the end of the world warnings) bios password listFairly lengthy list of password back doors

If none of the above work for a bios password your final option is a hackers app called a blaster. There’s SOME info on them on the link above. With a machine this old the standard method (3.5 or 5.25) boot, this is going to take a while. blasters are a combination of a custom bios override, bootloader, and program that basically trying every combination of ASCII code from 1 character to 64 for standard BIOS. Automatically rebooting the machine when the bios locks. This is the ultimate attack on bios. Be cautious. Blasters are hacking tools. And many are less than on the level.I use OpenBlaster. Sometimes listed as 0pen8laster. I’m not linking to it but if you’re not comfortable on a page you wind up at move on to another site.

Next: OS password:

_________________-- my grades are my own and do not represent an offer from boardsort, nor are they guaranteed. Please keep that in mind.

Ohkay, honestly the easiest thing to do on an os password is simply reformat and install a new OS. Windows 2, 3.0, and 3.11, and Debian x16 are the easiest here on 16 bit machines.For 32bit computers I’d use windows 3.11, or NT4, or Debian ver 6.x.x (use EVEN numbers for the Xs as they’re stable patch releases rather than odd Xs as those are feature releases. (Generally).For Debian in all cases start at the highest sub 7 version and slowly move back down to older versions till you find one that’s go all your drivers and is stable.

iBM can also run OS/2 if you want. And UNIX Master Terminal with X Window System.

If you REALLY want to access the data and salvage the drive:A live floppy of Mint, for 32 bit, and micro Linux for 16 bit will load quite well and you can access MOST of the drive via that method. For recovery of data.

Next: super tech god method

_________________-- my grades are my own and do not represent an offer from boardsort, nor are they guaranteed. Please keep that in mind.

Super tech god method. ALL ibm computers that came stock with a serial port (D9) have a hardware based serial controller You could simply plug the serial port on the PW computer and then plug it into your current computer. I’m not going to cover hardware slaving as this isn’t the place and I’d need a book. But basically you can access the laptop motherboard via the serial controller and slave the laptop as a multi interface peripheral. This is ideal for cracking OS passwords and encryption passwords on the slave system as you can use modern fast hardware to BF the old software/firmware.

Again this is much more complicated than plugging a into b but the internet is full of info on this and there are books in the technology section of any half way decent library. Amazon books even has some free ebooks that touch on the subject here

_________________-- my grades are my own and do not represent an offer from boardsort, nor are they guaranteed. Please keep that in mind.

Final thought: I’ve no doubt these “DOA” computers are arriving in perfect working order. Maybe it’s me,But somehow I find the less honest buyers about half the time. Just want to heads up that ebay/PayPal are set up to protect the BUYERS, and not the sellers. Proving the computer is working on the other side of the country is difficult, so I tend to insure them prior to shipping, when I actually ship with a drive, so if my computer arrives DOA I’m not out the money.

_________________-- my grades are my own and do not represent an offer from boardsort, nor are they guaranteed. Please keep that in mind.

Lost - is there still meaningful value to those vintage computing lovers if I pull the hard drives? Across all of the ones I have there's prob $600-$800 in value but that's even more risk if hard drives go to crap in shipment cause then I'm out that profit plus shipping cost.

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